In the autumn of 1928, eighteen-year-old Creda Brown, a young white woman, was spending time with her older sister, Gertrude Resso, in Omaha, Nebraska. The sisters, whose family was well-known in nearby Cass County and had roots in the small town of Weeping Water, were close. Gertrude, 21, was married to a milk wagon driver named Waldo Resso, and they were raising a young family in the city.
Creda’s visit, however, was cut short by an act of unimaginable violence that was part of a wave of terror gripping the city.
On the afternoon of Monday, November 19, 1928, Waldo Resso returned home from his shift at Roberts Dairy. When he entered the house, he made a horrifying discovery. In the bedroom, he found his wife Gertrude, bludgeoned to death. Screaming her name and searching for his sister-in-law, he ran to an upstairs bedroom, where he found Creda’s body. She, too, had been brutally murdered as she slept, her head crushed by a blunt instrument. Creda had been gagged before the attack. The weapon, believed to be an axe or hatchet, was the hallmark of a killer the press would soon dub "The Chopper."
The scene was one of profound horror and baffling contradictions. While the two sisters had been savagely killed in their beds, Gertrude’s young children—Robert, Donald, and Melvin, one just an infant—were found in the home, physically unharmed. Investigators were shaken by the brutality, with the county attorney calling it one of the foulest murders he had encountered in his career. The city of Omaha, already on edge from other recent, similar attacks, was thrown into a state of panic as police hunted for the axe-wielding killer.
The murders of Creda Brown and Gertrude Resso were part of a bloody spree that included the killing of J.W. Blackman and a vicious attack on another couple, Harold and Mabel Stribling, in the Carter Lake area. Police eventually arrested a transient railroad worker named Jake Bird in connection with the Stribling attack. Though initially there were inconsistencies in witness descriptions, Bird was ultimately charged and prosecuted in Iowa for that crime. He was never tried in Nebraska for the murders of Creda and her sister.
For nearly two decades, the question of who killed the Resso sisters remained officially unanswered. The truth would not come out until years later and hundreds of miles away. After being arrested in 1947 for the brutal axe murders of two women in Tacoma, Washington, Jake Bird began to confess. Seeking to delay his execution, he claimed responsibility for a staggering number of killings across the country.
Bird, who came to be known as the "Tacoma Ax-Slayer," confessed to as many as 46 murders in more than a dozen states, his timeline of terror stretching back to the 1920s. His method was chillingly consistent: he preyed on victims in their homes, using an axe or hatchet to commit robbery and murder, often targeting white women. Among his many confessions were the murders he committed during his time in Omaha in 1928, including those of Creda Brown and Gertrude Resso.
Jake Bird was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder for the Tacoma killings. His confessions helped law enforcement in multiple states close numerous cold cases, bringing a grim resolution to families who had waited years for answers. He was executed by hanging at the Washington State Penitentiary on July 15, 1949. Though he never faced a Nebraska court for ending Creda Brown's young life, his confession stands as the final word on who was responsible for the horrific crime that devastated a family and terrorized a city.
